Be Wary: Corporations Have Big Plans to Profit from Global Warming

It’s time to go on greenwashing high alert.  Companies are getting the message that they’re not going to continue making profits if they’re seen as being bad for the environment, as the public becomes more educated and passionate about the fight against global warming. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that all of those companies are starting to do the right thing and clean up their acts.  Some are choosing to present themselves as eco-friendly even as they pollute the earth, eager to cash in on the green movement.

From Alternet:

For example, proponents of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), an artificial hormone that boosts a cow’s milk production, now cite a study published at Cornell University “proving” that using rBGH is green. When the study came out, newspapers wrote clever headlines about reducing cows’ carbon “hoofprint.” Yet the basis of the study (that cows treated with rBGH eat the same amount as cows not treated with the hormone) was flawed, and the study was written by a group including Dale Bauman (who has received funding from Monsanto, the company then behind rBGH, in the past) and a Monsanto consultant. (Monsanto owned rBGH and marketed it under the brand name Posilac until it sold the product to Eli Lilly and Company last month.)

In reality, the way to reduce a dairy cow’s carbon hoofprint is to allow her to graze on pasture to reduce the amount of grain in her diet. As a perennial, grass does not require annual planting. Nor does it require fertilizer (beyond the manure fertilizer the cows apply to the pasture themselves). The cows also replace the machinery to harvest, process and transport their food that would be required for a diet of grain. But a cow receiving rBGH cannot enjoy a diet of mostly grass; she simply cannot take in enough calories a day via grazing to support increased milk production. Only a higher-calorie grain diet — one that makes cows sick — can support the metabolism of a cow on drugs.

Alternet points out that companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer are pushing the lie that genetically modified crops are going to get us through the climate crisis, and that many people won’t dig deep enough into the science behind it to learn the truth.

It’s clear that even as the oil industry finally dies a slow, long overdue death, other greedy, unscrupulous industries will step in to take its place. We’ll always be battling money-hungry corporations that will do anything to gain the sort of power that the oil industry has attained, and we definitely can’t give up.  Let’s not allow Monsanto et al to get us off track.

Link [Alternet]
Photo credit: Flickr user gina pina

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